NAPFA Spring 2015 Conference Review

NAPFA’s Spring conference was the second conference for financial planners that I’ve been to (after last year’s FPA BE in Seattle).

Some general thoughts:

• I found the people to be friendlier (maybe they were just more dressed down?) than FPA BE
• The vast majority of the sessions were extremely broad/not highly technical
• The event was run extremely smoothly (kudos to the Grand Hyatt Staff – sorry about that guac I dropped)
• Lots of sessions hosted by people pimping out their fund/product

I missed both of Kitces’ talks, however, he’s blogged about them before:

• Longevity Annuities
  • This one is really interesting, I don’t think many people have wrapped their heads around the mortality credits idea
• Reverse Mortgages (not sure if this is the latest he’s written)
  • I think the put option value of the reverse mortgage is really interesting, especially if there is a zero-cost mortgage – unfortunately houses around here are way too expensive for that option to have much value

A few (extremely simplified and occasionally poorly represented) reviews of selected sessions (in no particular order):

• Keynote from Daymond John
  • To his credit, his speech was very entertaining and he made an effort to connect with the crowd
  • That said, his speech, which included a DJ (to play music and sound effects for him to speak over) and a slideshow that contained about a million pictures of himself and his famous friends, was pretty much the antithesis of NAPFA
  • I’m pretty sure everyone was confused by the choice of keynote speaker

• Putting a Value on Your Value: Quantifying Vanguard Advisor’s Alpha – James Rowley
  • Pretty good session that focused for the most part on how people with advisors do vs. people without advisors
    • There is some interesting self-selection bias here
  • His best point was that advisors that do a good job will typically be undervalued because there is no available parallel universe where the client can see where she’d have ended up without an advisor
    • My interpretation of his point, I don’t think he mentioned parallel universes
  • To Vanguard’s credit, this presentation was all about the info and not about their offerings

• Women in NextGen – Panel Discussion
  • Four young (27-35?) women on a panel, two who work as solo practitioners and two who are parts of larger firms
  • Was very interesting to hear about their career paths / what their businesses (especially the SPs) are like
  • Discussion only went toward their gender when the moderator realllllly steered it toward there, when asked about it, I’m pretty sure most/all of them said their age was a bigger problem for ‘older generation’ clients than their gender

• Building Family Legacies Through Philanthropy – Sally Alspaugh
  • Most of the talk was about the statistic that dynastic wealth dissipates some really high % of the time within 3 generations
  • She believes that the way to prevent the dissipation is by having shared family values that transcend money, especially re: philanthropy
  • All of the things she said about ‘typical’ spendthrift inheritors/2nd/3rd generations is pretty much the opposite of what I’ve seen in my experience

• The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor – Cam Marston
  • Great speech, clearly an excellent speaker who has given this one more than a couple of times
  • Boomers+ want to hear your background/where you came from/letters after your name
  • Millennials/Gen Xers want to hear what you’re about/what you’re going to do for them
  • He seemed pretty spot on with most of the Gen X and older stuff – maybe it’s my bias or the fact that he was running out of time, but his piece about millennials seemed underdeveloped/not as accurate

• Behavioral Finance and Investor Decision Making – Gregory La Blanc
  • Good speaker
  • Speech was essentially a run-through of a bunch of cognitive biases with the occasional reminder that it isn’t just clients, but also (especially) advisors that can suffer from these

• Learning from History
  • This one was an unabashed plug for a fund

• Chips, Jets, Myths, and Miles Davis – Neil Patel
  • Engaging throughout
  • Mostly boiled down to the need to adapt and have tight OODA loops

• Tech Demo – Advizr
  • Slick financial plan creation software
    • Separate portal for advisor and client
  • Said their goal was “delivering more financial plans”
  • From a technical planning/customization point of view, the software should probably still be in beta
    • e.g., no way to (even manually, much less automatically) include file/suspend social security benefits, no AMT tax calculations
  • May be a good fit for planners working with very young clientele that don’t need ultra-accurate projections because their time horizons are long enough that there is more noise than signal anyway

I’d probably be interested in attending another NAPFA event in a couple of years, but I’d love to see some more technical planning sessions and fewer sessions that are nothing more than infomercials.